We’re excited to be showing the work of artist Alvaro Naddeo this month in the Thinkspace Gallery office. The subject matter of his work is inspired by waste, overconsumption and social inequality. Our interview with Alvaro Naddeo covers his creative process and we’re excited to learn more about our latest member of the Thinkspace family. Owner and curator Andrew Hosner was blown away by his work, and we hope you are all equally excited by his detailed composition.
The opening of Alvaro Naddeo’s “Discarded” is Saturday, March 4th from 6- 9 pm.
SH: What is the inspiration behind your latest body of work?
AN: The inspiration behind my latest body of work could be separated into two parts, one esthetical and one political.
On the aesthetic level, I’m inspired by everyday marginalized, urban, quotidian objects, and inspired by trying to find an angle or a composition where those uninteresting objects obtain a new and compelling beauty. I’m also fascinated by the natural decay of those elements, observing how everything loses its original color, shape, and texture, how sunlight, heat, rain, humidity wind and time add an organic and particular texture to them.
On a political level, I’m inspired by the opportunity to share my point of view of the world and to connect with people who think alike. It’s very interesting to me to use art as an instrument for criticizing the things I see and disagree, like overconsumption, social inequality, programmed obsolescence and the
consequence they have over the exploited third world countries, nature and planet as a whole. I’m compelled to criticize the insatiable greed at the expense of people who didn’t have the same opportunities as the lucky ones. I try to use the little attention that I can get with my work to try and provoke a conversation about those uncomfortable issues that we usually try to avoid.
SH: What made you leave advertising? Or do you still work in advertising and your art is a form of rebellion?
AN: I still work in advertising, I have been for the last 20 years. I have two young kids and can’t afford to quit at least until they grow up some more. I also don’t want to burden my art with the responsibility of providing for my family. I would rather have my art independent and free, without the need or worry of selling at all costs. I’m afraid that if I have to sell a lot and fast, I may involuntarily or unconsciously shift my themes towards what sells more, instead of keeping as it is, which is just what I really want to say and paint. I believe not all brands
are evil, not all of them are trying to sell us things we don’t need. Some of them are indeed providing good and useful products at a fair price and entertaining advertising. There is a middle ground between over consumption and total absence of it.
SH: How have the various environments you’ve lived influenced your work?
AN: The various environments I’ve lived have a huge influence on my work, I consider it to be very auto-biographical. My daily observations influence my work in a very unconscious manner and as I moved from city to city I noticed that my visual vocabulary grew and incorporated new elements from those places. It’s interesting to combine what is universal with the very local. I have a lot of pleasure mixing the particulars, for example, you could find on my paintings a container that I saw on top of a truck on the Interstate 405 and inside of it, find a Duane Reade’s bag from NY, next to a sign that says “proibido estacionar” from São Paulo.
SH: How long have you’ve been developing this particular composition/narrative? What are your favorite brushes and paints?
AN: I’ve been developing this particular composition narrative since 2010, when I started to draw and paint just for fun, very unpretentiously, painting just what I wanted, what pleased me to see on the paper, never worrying about an audience. After a couple of years, I was able to look back and rationalize in words the meaning behind what I was doing and communicating. I experimented a lot with different brushes sizes and shapes, and now I have found what works best for me. My favorite brushes are pretty simple, they are a generic brand from an art supply store, I paint 80% of the time with two script brushes sizes 5/0 and 1. My paints are from Winsor and Newton, I started with a small 14 pan set, then added the 45 pan set and now I’m buying Winsor and Newton tubes when refilling for the colors I use the most.
SH: What is your creative process? Walk us through a day in the studio?
AN: My studio is at home, in my garage to be more specific. My day at the studio begins after my work day is over and after I’ve spent some time with my kids, so usually it is at night on weekdays for about one or two hours. I average about three or four hours on each day of the weekend.
Before each session, there are three imprescriptible things that I make sure to have at the studio: coffee, podcast and a chronometer. My creative process begins drawing very loose ideas, rough sketches on the closest available piece of paper, I don’t have a sketchbook and I usually collect future ideas while painting something else, I don’t work on the new ideas immediately, I only go back to them a couple days or weeks later, (I do believe in letting ideas mature) then I start studying slightly different possibilities or compositions on tracing paper.
After having the composition more or less figured out, I use Photoshop or Illustrator to get a clean block of the overall shape, with more accurate perspective and correct proportions/scale among the objects, then transfer this base drawing to my watercolor paper. When painting the objects in my composition I either draw it from memory or have it in front of me as a model or work with a picture that I took. It depends on the object and how close I want it to be to reality.
SH: What do you enjoy doing when not painting?
AN: When not painting, my favorite thing are spending time with my family, consuming art, watching movies, reading and I am ashamed to confess, playing video games for a lot more hours than I should.
SH: What excites you about another artist’s work?
AN: The thing that excites me the most about other artist’s work whose art I like is learning more about their creative process, trajectory, and background. When beside the finished piece you also have access to all the circumstances that surround that creation, having the tools to understand what lead the artist to do that, it amplifies my enjoyment so much and I connect a lot more.
I’m attracted to works that have a narrative, pieces that tell stories and that reward you more when you spend more time with them. Very good examples of that are Edward Hopper and Norman Rockwell’s work. I’m also attracted to artists who use brands, logos, icons and typography on their art, like Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg and Ed Ruscha. I enjoy the contrast and color combination from Robert Indiana and Stuart Davis, the organic nature of Egon Schiele’s watercolor and I also need to mention Paul Cadmus, Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth and Lee Bontecou. And finally from my design and advertising background I love Milton Glaser, Saul Bass and Paul Rand.
SH: If and when you experience creative blocks or self-doubt, what do you do to re -inspire you?
It may sound unusual, but I haven’t really experienced creative blocks. Probably because I paint for so little hours a day, and because I have all the time of my non-painting hours to have ideas so it doesn’t feel like I’m having a creative block. I’m sure that if I was painting at least 40 hours a week I would experience that.
